Why we didn’t choose Stripe to handle EU subscriptions

Hate VAT Moss and all this stuff, this is what making building businesses in the EU so hard and complicated.

I like how Gumroad handle this for people, though this obviously isn't ideal for many.

For Rosieland we are moving off of Substack, for a few reasons but the tax one is a non negoitable one. Currently we have access to a 'dynamic_tax_rates' beta via Stripe, though it still requires a chunk of set up time our side. It feels like the best way forward as we have a long term view and worry about relying on third party tools. Thank god my husband deals with all of that and not me 😅

VAT needs to be calculated and reported. Surprisingly Stripe does not directly offer this service yet

Yes they do, I joined the beta program for this (which anyone can do). See https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/taxes

Wow, awesome write up! 👏👏

This was such a struggle for me as well! Even if you manage to get the right combination of tools, wiring everything together and maintaining this little monster no one wants as things evolve and regulations change is a challenge by itself...

We're working on Abowire (abowire.com), an EU-based platform to automate subscriptions businesses. I'd love to hear more about how we could make it easier for makers to build their products. Would anyone be interested in giving us feedback? :)

Thanks a lot. This post cannot be upvoted enough given the invaluable information presented in the linked article. 👍

Thank you so much for this! Somehow this subject seems to be neglected a lot and it's a true struggle for EU-based startups.

When setting up a payment flow for Shipright about 2 years ago, this gave me true headaches and costed way too much time. In the end we used Chargebee (which can do the VIES verification, conditional taxing, etc). It was a lot of work to set it up the way we wanted and I had to use a lot of Zapier and other hacks to get the experience right.

Paddle seems to be a lot easier!

Thanks for sharing this post 🙂 With a B to C customer, how do you determine where the customer is registered for VAT? Is it where there CC is registered? Or is it their current address. Just wondering in relation to digital nomads -- where you might have for example a European resident living and working from a non Vat country.

Curious to hear others experiences of Paddle.

I'm so glad I chose Paddle for Sizzy. I didn't have to deal with absolutely anything regarding taxes. It's a bliss!

My accountant told me I could use the home country VAT (Portugal in this case) on other EU countries. I then got confirmation from another accountant, so that's what I'm currently doing.

My DIY solution is to check whether or not the billing country was in the EU and, if yes, apply the Portuguese VAT. This is the only registered tax rate I have on Stripe.

My biggest problem, however, is still this: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/stripe-portuguese-tax-authority-19036433f0

Tax Agony.... I'm also using Paddle for this exact reason and loving it :)))

Have you compared Gumorad with Paddle? What do you think about Gumroad?

Great article. Thanks a lot!

We used Stripe + Quaderno, but Quaderno costs about $49 / month even if you don't have any sales. And that's only for calculating the correct amounts for VAT and for preparing reports and invoices.